Eshera Sports Complex

Location: Eshera, Abkhazia

Completed: Late 1970s/early 1980

Architect: Not known

Alternative name: Central Olympic Base of the USSR/Escher Sport Complex

Genre: Brutalist, Soviet architecture, former USSR

At its height, the Central Olympic Base of the USSR, as it was officially known, was one of the most important multi-sports training centres in the entire Soviet Union. There were many facilities on the base including four football pitches, a gymnasium, basketball courts, running tracks, a 50-metre Olympic-size swimming pool and living quarters for the athletes (pictured). A high percentage of the athletes who took part in the famously-boycotted 1980 Summer Olympics, which were held in Moscow, trained at the Central Olympic Base of the USSR. The complex became abandoned after the Abkhazia-Georgia conflict which took place between August 1992 and September 1993. More information and photographs of Eshera Sports Complex.